First POST: Traffic
BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, October 3 2013
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Government shutdown of web services irking journalists; Grover Norquist is a Guy Fawkes fan; Lavabit's embattled owner explains why he shut his service down; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Corrosion
BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, August 9 2013
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Two encrypted e-mail providers go down; Mitch McConnell's alliance with the Tea Party gets messy; charity: water gets its 15 minutes of fame; and much, much more. Read More
ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, June 18 2013
ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. Read More
Democratic Analytics Expert To Launch ShareProgress, An Optimized Social Sharing Tool
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, February 14 2013
Jim Pugh, a prominent political data expert within the Democratic party, announced the launch of his new company ShareProgress Thursday. Pugh aims to arm progressive activists with a new tool that will help them to more ... Read More
Introducing Tools You Use: Jim Pugh on ActionKit
BY Personal Democracy Plus | Monday, July 2 2012
For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers, techPresident is asking some of the folks out there on the leading edge of digital politics and government to point out just one tool or service that has become a mainstay, a must-use or just incredibly helpful in their work. There's one rule: It can't be something the person has built or the person's company is selling. We're asking folks to pay some karma forward here and highlight an innovation coming from elsewhere that makes their work easier.
The first contributor is Jim Pugh. Pugh worked for Obama for America 2008 and now manages technology for the progressive group Rebuild the Dream. ActionKit is an online organizing toolkit he uses to manage 600,000 online members.
Read MoreSan Francisco, Organizational Hub for a New Class of National Politicos
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, March 8 2012
From left to right: Chris Kelly, Christine Pelosi and Fred Davis at Rally's Super Tuesday party. Photo: Rally.
What was unusual about an evening Super Tuesday gathering in San Francisco was that many of the people there aren't working in a startup aimed at making some commercial aspect of life easier, faster and more fun. Instead, they are part of a generation of people with both political and tech savvy, using the web to fundamentally alter politics in general and specific campaigns in particular. For these people, the promise of a networked world and a new, networked politics — where people connecting outside the by-all-accounts-flawed and scandal-fraught party apparatus are starting to make an impact — is coming into focus. And rather than using their knowledge of the technology world to start the next Facebook, they're building a cadre of Silicon Valley companies that work in public affairs — not just non-profits, government, and civic life, but politics and campaigns. Read More
Targeted Facebook Ads Latest Tool In Anti-Foreclosure Fight
BY Nick Judd | Friday, March 2 2012
The progressive organization Rebuild the Dream is remixing two online advertising strategies in the hopes of applying pressure on companies like Freddie Mac and JPMorgan Chase to change their foreclosure practices.
Rebuild the Dream is out to its email list with a call to raise money the organization promises will be spent on ads to make this point. The twist is that unlike other campaigns of this type, the money won't go to web videos or TV ads. Instead, says Rebuild the Dream Chief Technology Officer Jim Pugh, the plan is to put Facebook ads in front of employees at both companies using the social network's ad targeting features.
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